Why NO Kopi Luwak

Quaffee is proud to be associated with the specialty coffee industry, and is proud to be ethical. For this reason we do NOT, and will
NOT supply what has essentially become a gimmick of coffee pundits and so called aficionados and is often referred to as:

Kopi luwak

Weasel coffee

The coffee in the bucket list

cat coffee

poo coffee

civet coffee

To name a few.

So why do we not do it.

Why is it so famous

After the Dutch took coffee to Indonesia, and planted it there they found that a local civet, the palm civet (or
Luwak and the locals called it), was eating the ripe coffee cherries. After initially
trying to get rid of the "pests", they then found that the civet poo contained the pips, or the green coffee beans. After cleaning the
poo they found that the coffee bean was fully intact, the rest is history, as the stories spread.

And then...

The fame spread, and since the luwak ate many things besides the coffee cherry, collecting the poos was labour intensive
and so the price of Kopi Luwak coffee became higher, not because it was better but because of the original method, it was
collected.

However with the higher price more unscrupulous people became interested in making a quick buck and so the luwaks where caught
breed and essentially their poo is farmed.

These are the current popular methods:

The Palm civet is feed only the coffee cherries that are no longer just the ripe ones, and are kept in cages that are
slightly elevated and allow the farmers to easily wash the defecated wasted down into drains where
they are collected cleaned and then sold as the original Kopi Luwak.

The other way they are farmed is that the Luwak's stomach acid is extracted (the civet needs to be dead to do this) and is used
in the fermentation of the coffee cherry, which then produces the coffee beans.

So either way these are not ethical, and hence goes against one of our core philosophy of being conscious and environmentally
friendly in all aspects that we can.

One other thing worth nothing is that Robusta (the lowest quality coffee) is often feed to the civets and hence the
coffee of origin, is of poor quality to start off with.

What does it taste like?

Although we have not tasted it, for reasons above, from those that have, we have been told that it is similar to other wet
processed Samaritan coffees like Mandheling, which we normally have available. Check our
coffees page.

Read more...

Here are some other links about the cruel practice of farming Kopi Luwak: